49th Parallel (1941, Michael Powell) (f)

or, I Don't Know Where The Hell We're Going. More Pressburger's bag, really; Powell is up to the task of making the story believable (after a rather tortured opening) and gets good performances (including the magnetic Olivier as a trapper wizth ahn outrageous French accent), but he's just there to make sure this crazy-ass propaganda film doesn't go off the tracks. (There's a scene near the end that features an intellectual, slightly effeminate novelist lecturing two Nazis, dressed in three-piece suits, on the topic of Indians while in a teepee; that I had to think about how weird this was is a testament to Powell's ability.) A strange, fascinating script from Pressburger. He tells the story of six Nazis trying to escape Canada entirely from their point-of view. We aren't asked to find them sympathetic, but being the center of the narrative, we are forced to be in their shoes. There's a great deal of humor in their interactions with the various left-of-center oddballs they come across (mountain men, Socialist Christians, an army deserter). Then, brilliantly, cruelly, he uses a counter-intuitive strategy to propel the story forward: every character that's interesting or sympathetic is killed or left behind, until only the most despicable and fanatical are left, and in each scene the humor quickly sours into brutality. It's almost a parody of traditional film narrative, with the usual willful protagonist replaced by the Überwillful Nazi lieutenant (key image: the lieutentant marches through the wilderness, and doesn't stop when his only remaining soldier drops to the ground, exhausted.) While it's wonderfully unpredictable, I'm not sure how well it would hold up on a second viewing. And because it's propaganda designed to bring America into the war, there's too many moments where the film stops to denounce Fascism. That's the thing about propaganda; once its shelf-life is up, the message is either stupid or common sense.

Then again, seeing how it's about crazy, inhuman Fascists versus compassionate, independent "decadent Democrats", maybe the message here isn't as dated as I originally thought.